Iran’s supreme chief breaks silence on protests, blames US

Iran’s supreme chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei responded publicly on Monday to the largest protests in Iran in years, breaking weeks of silence to sentence what he known as “rioting” and accuse the U.S. and Israel of planning the protests.

Khamenei mentioned he was “heartbroken” by the loss of life of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini within the custody of Iran’s morality police, which set off the nationwide protests, calling her loss of life a “sad incident.” However, he sharply condemned the protests as a international plot to destabilize Iran, echoing authorities’ earlier feedback.

“This rioting was planned,” he instructed a cadre of police college students in Tehran. “These riots and insecurities were designed by America and the Zionist regime, and their employees.” He described scenes of protestors ripping off their state-mandated headscarves and setting fireplace to mosques, banks and police automobiles as “not normal,” and “unnatural.”

His feedback come as nationwide protests sparked by Amini’s loss of life entered a 3rd week regardless of the federal government’s efforts to crack down. Authorities have repeatedly blamed international international locations and exiled opposition teams for fanning the unrest, with out offering proof.

A police motorbike and a trash bin burning in Tehran, throughout a protest over the loss of life of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old lady who had been detained by the nation’s morality police. (AP)

The protests over Amini’s loss of life have tapped right into a deep nicely of grievances in Iran, together with the nation’s surging costs, excessive unemployment, social restrictions and political repression.

Demonstrations have continued in Tehran and far-flung provinces at the same time as authorities have restricted web entry to the skin world and blocked social media apps.

As the brand new educational 12 months started this week, college students gathered in protest at universities throughout Iran, in line with movies broadly shared on social media, chanting slogans in opposition to the federal government and denouncing safety forces’ clampdown on demonstrators.

Universities in main cities together with Isfahan in central Iran, Mashhad within the northeast and Kermanshah within the west have held protests that includes crowds of scholars clapping, chanting and burning state-mandated headscarves.

“Don’t call it a protest, it’s a revolution now,” shouted college students at Shahid Beheshti University within the capital of Tehran, as girls took off their hijabs and set them alight, in protest over Iran’s legislation requiring girls to cowl their hair. “Students are awake, they hate the leadership!” chanted crowds of scholars on the University of Mazandaran within the nation’s north.